De Drager (2013)

How do you make a film about an architect who did not build buildings? Exceptional for a film about an architect the focus does not lie upon his projects, but upon principles of design resp. how the architect can intervene in the «messy everyday environment» - which «like a human body rather needs to be nurtured than forced». The «Habraken-story» starts 1961: Dutch architect and theorist publishes a book entitled «The Supports and the People: The End of Mass Housing», in which he fundamentally questions the role of the architect. Instead of regarding the architect as design-authority, he proposes to distinguish between two levels of authority respectively responsibility: the «support» designed by the architect and the «infill» determined by the individual occupant. After the publication of his book Habraken gave up practicing as an architect: «the theory should not be confused with the examples».